Drawn Into Darkness (22 page)

B
y the time the first police car arrived, Quinn had led the way into the blue house, where he and Forrest had put their mother's purse and her letter back in their original positions. Quinn felt as taut as the wires on a snare drum, but he had himself under steely control now. And as far as he could see, so did his brother.

He glanced outside as the siren bleeped to a stop and the officer, a state trooper, got out of his cruiser. “It's Willet,” he reported.

Sitting on the sofa, stony calm and quiet, Forrest nodded. Quinn stood in the shadows near the front window and watched as Willet swaggered over to the shack's crude wooden steps. Muscular, with no paunch, but a bit short for a cop, Willet showed every indication of having a Napoleon complex, from his extremely erect posture to his scowling face to his shining boots. He did not merely open the front door; he subjugated it, whamming into the shack without knocking. Nor did he bother with a greeting. “I ordered you people to clear these premises.”

As calmly as possible Quinn said, “If we'd left, you wouldn't be here to look at evidence now.”

“Which said same evidence is no damn good since you two done tampered with it.”

“We haven't touched the bed with what may be our mother's blood on it.” He tilted his head toward the room. “Go see.”

“You don't tell me how to do my job!”

“Wouldn't dream of it,” said Quinn, utterly toneless.

Willet glared at him. Quinn stared back with his heartbeat drumming in his ears but, he hoped, with no expression on his face. He didn't hear the second cruiser pull in, but Forrest got up and walked to the front window to see. “Somebody from the Sheriff's Office is here.”

Immediately, Willet barged into the room with the bare bed and shackles. Wanting to get ahead of the other cop, probably.

Quinn wished the sheriff's deputy might be Bernie Morales. But in a moment he could see it wasn't; that would have been entirely too helpful, Quinn thought bitterly. The law officer who came in was the detective they'd met earlier, Deputy Kehm, a tall, rawboned, sad-eyed man with a bald head but a robust white walrus mustache that made his leathery face look very tan. “Quinn, Forrest,” he greeted them, shaking hands. Quinn fretted over his use of their first names; was the cop being condescending or just friendly? “What's this about?”

Quinn led him to Mom's note, pulled it out, and watched him read it. Forrest put a tape into the VCR and turned it on. As it started to play, Quinn noticed it was not the same one as before, but contained much the same content, except that this one added bondage.

Kehm's head jerked up. “Jeez!” he exclaimed, staring. “Are all them tapes like that?”

“This is only the second one we've watched,” said Forrest.

Quinn asked, “Is that old goat Stoat?”

“I don't know.”

“The answer is yes,” said a ponderous voice; Trooper Willet had reentered the room to watch the video from behind them. “Yes, I recognize that man as Steven Stoat, which means we can issue a warrant for his arrest for sexual misconduct with a minor.”

Quinn heard this and turned sharply. “To hell with his sex kinks!” The minor would be Stoat's so-called nephew Bernie had mentioned, and if he had lasted this long, he could wait. “What about issuing a warrant for the bastard on suspicion of kidnapping my mother?”

Trooper Willet faced him belligerently. “So you found her purse, so she was here in this house, that don't prove—”

“You need to see this,” Kehm interrupted smoothly, handing him the letter.

After reading the sheet of tablet paper, Trooper Willet demanded of Quinn, “Where'd you find this?”

“On top of her purse.”

“How do I know you didn't write it yourself and plant it?”

For the first time in his life Quinn actually saw red. A haze of that color obscured his vision as sheer rage suffused his body. As he tensed to attack Willet, he felt hands grabbing his arms hard enough to hold him back: Forrest and Deputy Kehm.

He heard Forrest tell Willet, not too steadily, “That's my mother's handwriting.”

Kehm said pleasantly enough, “Willet, looks to me like we got a crime scene here. It's all yours. You take the videotapes and pursue the sex crimes charges. I'll follow up on this other angle.”

Willet rumbled, “I told these two boys this morning to clear out of here. Now all the evidence is tainted.”

“Not the tapes. No way they altered them.”

“Okay, but I still ought to cuff them for trespassing, obstruction, and acting just plain stupid.”

“No need. You want them out of here, I'll take them with me.”

Quinn's vision started to clear, and he regained just enough sense to keep his mouth shut. Rather than yelp,
“Boys?”
at Willet, he stepped back. Forrest and Deputy Kehm let go of him.

Forrest told Trooper Willet with strained courtesy, “We'd like to have Mom's note after you're done with it.”

Willet glowered at him and offered the note to Kehm, who held an evidence bag open to receive it. After closing and labeling this, he pocketed it, turned around, and winked one of his sad, hound-dog eyes at Forrest. His white walrus mustache made it impossible to tell whether he was smiling as he did so. He thrust his chin toward the front door, and without a word Quinn led the way out. Going down the three unpainted wooden steps was like a descent into hell, if only because of the heat and fiery light. Kehm opened the back doors of his cruiser for him and Forrest.

“You are not under arrest,” he told them as they got in.

Quinn still didn't trust himself to say anything.

Forrest asked, “Then where are you taking us?”

“My office, so we can talk about your mother. You hungry? I'm hungry. Let's stop for something to eat. You like pulled pork barbecue? Chili dog?”

Friendly, Quinn decided. But what the hell was the use of “friendly” under the circumstances? Pulled pork barbecue, hell. They needed to find Mom.

“We need to eat,” Forrest said as if hearing Quinn's thoughts, “so we can think halfway straight and stay on our feet. Thank you, Officer Kehm.”

“Chicken soup? I know a place that's got good chicken soup.”

This was not a melodramatic movie; this was real life and didn't deserve to be saddled with such a cliché. Quinn had to close his eyes and clench his teeth against his own frustration.

Forrest told Officer Kehm, “Whatever you want is fine with us.”

•   •   •

Within a few minutes after the twins came home from school, Ned felt confirmed in his good impression of Amy. Saying hello to Kyle and Kayla, he saw ten-year-olds who still looked somewhat like children, not fashion models, and thereby he saw a sensible mother. Talking with his grandchildren, he encountered kids who were mannerly yet full of life, and he gave credit to good parenting.

While pleased to meet him, the twins seemed not overly impressed that he was their newfound grandfather. “Now, if
Justin
came back,” Kayla told him, “
that
would be something.”

“Yes, it would.”

“Justin is our brother. You know what happened to him?”

“Yes, I heard.”

“He's probably dead,” Kayla said, but not quite as if this were her personal conviction. More as if she wanted to see whether her new grandfather would respond with horror.

Ned said, “That's sensible to think under the circumstances. But I still hope he's alive and he'll come home.”

“Okay.”

Kyle took over the interrogation. “Listen, we heard you're a drunk. Are you a drunk? No offense.”

“None taken. I used to be a drunk, but now I am a recovering alcoholic. Do you think your father would bring a drunk into the house?”

“No.”

Kayla asked, “How did you stop drinking? Did you get religion?”

“Yes, kind of, in a nondenominational sort of way.”

“Non what?”

“Nondenominational. Not Baptist or anything. More Zen, actually.”

Kayla blinked and did not ask what Zen meant. Instead she asked, “Can me and Kyle play with Oliver?”

“Kyle and I,” Amy corrected from the sofa.

Ned said, “Oliver would love that if it's okay with your mom.”

It was okay. Oliver happily romped off into the backyard with the Bradley twins. Once they were out of the room, Ned told Amy and Chad, “They're a credit to you.” Good kids, in Ned's experience, hardly ever came from bad families, although the opposite could be true, as he had proved by example. He'd had good parents. He'd had a good wife. The fact that Chad had turned out so well was a testament to the job his wonderful wife had done raising the boy after he, Ned, had turned into a drunken butthead.

Of the twins, Amy said, “They can be a bit outspoken, but I don't want to squelch their honesty away. You handled them well.”

“I'm glad you didn't shush them.”

“Sometimes I have to.”

“Not for me.”

“No, not for you.” She smiled, and Ned had to restrain himself from hugging her. Tacitly, he and she had just settled something between them. Without minding in the least, he had felt her watching him and judging him, assessing whether he could be trusted with the kids. He had also sensed that it was not in her nature to pass judgment and that she was now relieved to be done with it. She probably had no idea how greatly her acceptance warmed his heart.

•   •   •

Still holding the gun to my head, Stoat swore in a way that made cursing not just a vent for frustration but also a reinforcement of a threat, finishing off with, “You lard-ass uppity shit-tail damn stupid cow, how the hell did you call the cops on me?”

“I didn't!” Instead of speaking as calmly and firmly as I wanted to, I squeaked, “How could I?”

“You think I'm stupid? Who else—”

I managed to interrupt with articulate sincerity. “Mr. Stoat, sir, if I had called the cops, they would be
here
instead of—where are they? Your place?”

“I'm fixing to see. Move.” His freak-show face as grim as his tone, he marched me the few steps to where he kept his duct tape. Ripping some off with his snaggleteeth, he stuck it none too gently over my mouth. “Sit.” He prodded me into one of my kitchen chairs and duct-taped my hands behind me. Setting down his shotgun so he could immobilize me more quickly, he swaddled tape around my ankles and the legs of the chair. “Don't make a sound and don't move,” he said harshly and, in my opinion, quite unnecessarily. I nodded meekly.

Satisfied that he had me under control, Stoat took his gun and strode into the living room. Nothing prevented me from turning my head to watch him. Crouching beside my picture window, he peeped behind the closed drapes at a sideward angle, hardly moving them at all. Then he started to curse again, rapid-fire, like an automatic weapon. I didn't think he was speaking to me. I suspected he generally swore aloud when life didn't suit him. “That fucking half-assed car is back down there,” he complained between bursts of stronger language. “What the fuck's that all about?”

I wished I knew! Who in the world had driven into my front yard, and why? I wondered whether Stoat had seen anyone after conking me on the head. But even if my mouth had not been silenced by duct tape, I could not have asked him.

Peering out the window, Stoat swore some more. “Dickhead state trooper parked in front of my house. What the fuck the goddamn cops think they're doing? Jesus shit, here comes another one. Looks to be from the sheriff.”

Deep in my aching guts I felt a sluggish stirring of the feathered thing with wings called hope. Dare I hope this sudden influx of law enforcement might have something to do with me?

“This is bizarre,” said Stoat. “What the fuck do they want?”

Bizarre was the word, all right. Everything seemed so surreal that my faint fluttering of hope went still almost immediately, and the only thing I could think was that someone had found Justin's body.

Stoat craned his neck in an effort to see better—

And lost his balance, falling over and whacking his head on the corner of the windowsill. Just a few feet away from where Schweitzer had once lain, Stoat flopped to the carpeted floor and lay still. Knocked out.

I felt my mouth attempt to open beneath the duct tape, felt the skin stretch around my wide-open staring eyes; I was so astonished. Due to Stoat's bluster or his bravado or both, I had not realized Stoat was still feeling pretty damn weak from the snakebite.

Could he be—dead?

No, dammit, the bastard was not dead. He lay faceup, and I could see his greasy gray nose hair moving as he breathed. But he seemed to be out cold.

For all the good that did me when I sat firmly adhered to a kitchen chair. And when, of all the frustrating things, I knew there were police right down the road!

Immediately I tried to get free. I struggled to slip my hands out of their sticky binding, but I soon found that the duct tape was way stronger than I was. I tried to kick my legs free. Same problem. I tried to stand and walk while still taped to the chair, only to put myself in great danger of falling. Panting with effort, I sat still again, trying to think.

As my breathing eased, I could hear Stoat snoring. Snoring! The loathsome man lay sleeping like a baby on my living room floor.

I wanted to scream. I thought I would lose my scant remaining mind to sheer outrage.

Then another seething, bubbling sort of snoring sound turned my attention away from Stoat and toward the stove, where I saw a large pot boiling over.

The spaghetti! Or linguine, whatever. I had forgotten all about it. Not only would it overcook, but the sauce needed to be stirred or it would burn. In fact, I already smelled it scorching.

I felt a moment's concern, then rebelled against it. There went Stoat's dinner. Nyah, nyah. Served him right. Lying there taking a snooze.